The Virtue of Patience
by Mair Technosage
Summary: Mrs. Hudson knew many things, including the value of patience. Anyone who dealt with Sherlock on a regular basis had to know it's value. Mrs. Hudson learned it the hard way, and John had more to learn.


Mrs. Hudson was a patient woman. It was said of her that if she ever left Baker's Street England would fall—she hadn't always been there though. She started out in a quiet village, then spent time overseas in constant danger and didn't make it to Baker's Street until she'd already done England and America a favor and met Sherlock Holmes—who required a lot of patience.

Oh yes, Mrs. Martha (formerly Appleby) Hudson was given quite the opportunity to learn patience. Not through having her own children, but by surviving her husband. They'd been so in love once, or so she thought. Post-war England was a sight. Everyone rebuilding everything—trying to get things back to normal, which included a whole slew of young people wanting to get married—especially the ones who weren't exactly pretty. Mrs. Hudson knew that when she was still Martha Appleby she wasn't the prettiest girl, but she wasn't the least fortunately endowed by a long shot and she was young without being too young. Her mother said she was just enough of a flirt to catch anyone's eye with half a brain.

She'd caught the eye of a soldier newly back and handsome as anything. He wooed her. He charmed her. He married her when she turned 18. Then, slowly, she started to see the cracks in the façade. She heard the rumors of dead animals dotting the countryside. She saw how his eyes darkened any time she mentioned the possibility of children. She didn't miss that each time she mentioned having some young thing to care for that an animal, or person, turned up dead somewhere in the 50 kilometer radius of where they lived. She didn't miss the fact that when the police came calling for the fourth time about a missing person her husband got the opportunity for a job transfer overseas.

Martha Hudson buried Martha Appleby's naiveté with her wishes for children the first time she was struck when she informed her husband of the visit from the police. She focused on trying to get evidence of her husband's wrong doing instead of getting away. It just wasn't right. It really wasn't right when they finally found young Jimmy Weatherby with his blue eyes still wide and his dark curls falling to the side with half his skull still attached under the dock of the pond near his house. Anne and William Weatherby had left for the North country after that. William Weatherby was her second cousin and no one touched her family and got away with it.

Mrs. Hudson was schooled in twenty seven years of patience and the occasional beating before she managed to get just enough information that she felt she could contact someone about it without dying for it. The police in Florida were useless though, and while they agreed her husband probably had something to do with the death of two teens the only evidence they could find suggested a murder suicide and that wasn't enough to call it a double homicide and her husband's fault. They barely managed to scrape up a flimsy case on the one death they could circumstantially link to him based on her statement about the bloody clothes he'd burned behind the back shed when he thought her in the hospital still from the most recent beating he'd given her.

Just when the hour seems darkest and her husband was due to be released based on new evidence in the case that was in his favor, William Weatherby came through with contact information for a young man by the name of Sherlock Holmes. She was willing to try anything. She knew she would be killed next for giving the police the testimony in the first place if her husband got out. They weren't going to be able to protect her until her husband actually did or said something threatening to her. Her husband wouldn't start with a threat—he'd finish her and they both knew it. William said that the young man seemed far too young to have the knowledge he did about forensics and chemistry, but that his assistance had been sought by a mutual acquaintance on a case and he'd managed it neatly and quickly with seemingly very little to go on—seemed almost bored with it all. He told her that Mr. Holmes seemed very interested in her husband and the possible connection to the death of his son. She didn't think twice and made the call to London.

The young man who appeared on her doorstep roughly twelve hours later was a bit unexpected and stopped her cold. He had the same dark hair and eyes that she last saw on poor Jimmy, but where as Jimmy couldn't see anything with his dead eyes where as young Sherlock saw everything. He swept inside the small house, not waiting for an invitation, with eyes that took in everything. She managed to greet him, invited him to come in as she closed the door behind him and then offered him some tea. For a brief moment when those eyes gave her a second glance, she saw the slightest hint of good breeding flash with a modicum of guilt at his forgotten manners. The guilt fled as quickly as it came. The low voice that rolled out public school perfect thanked her by name and told her how he took his tea.

A cup of tea each, the free run of her home, her library card and the local public library later he managed to get a timeline for the murders in the UK and across the pond. He figured out her husband's preferred method of killing after comparing crime scene photographs, and found a missing teen that her husband had been torturing in a shack in the everglades twenty kilometers away. He found the evidence that linked her husband to the two teens. He protected her from the serial killer her husband had been training that came after her 48 hours after Sherlock's arrival. He stayed through the trial, even though he kept saying he needed to leave. Though, in all honesty, the subpoena probably helped with that. She gave him a place to stay in her home, helped him through his worst withdrawal symptoms, and gave him tea and beans on toast until he was sufficiently recovered enough for more substantial food. He held her hand when the judge handed down the death penalty, frowned when a barrister showed up to work with an American lawyer to ensure Mrs. Hudson take her soon-to-be-former husband to the metaphorical cleaners during the divorce proceedings when a copy of his will mysteriously turned up in her mailbox and showed a staggering amount of previously unknown money not going to her thus leaving her penniless. She didn't chuck the experiment he'd started on the decomposition rate of flesh in locations of high humidity he'd started on the back porch. He sat with her as a witness during her husband's swiftly arranged execution just after the finalization of the divorce. She listened to his ranting about "Mycroft" and told him about her plans to sell the house in Florida and buy a two or three unit rental home in London. She hung up on Mycroft when he asked her how frequently Sherlock shot up while abroad and if she knew of any rehabilitation programs that Sherlock could be enrolled in. They hugged one another at the airport when it was time for Sherlock to return to London.

Oh yes, Mrs. Hudson had learned patience over the years. It was tested when Sherlock moved in to the apartment on Baker's street. She endured gun shots, violin playing and odiferous body parts in varied states of decay all over the flat. She wasn't alone in the experience though. She had a nice young doctor to commiserate with. She also had Mrs. Turner, but that old busy body was a bit too much like her husband with some of her mannerisms—always had to be the best. Oh certainly Sherlock felt, deservedly so, that he should be the best, but he could at least back it up with his actions and deductions of the world around him. Mrs. Turner didn't see anything past her own home. John, the dear man, was simply good. John was a good man, intelligent, resourceful certainly and not afraid to stand up for what was right. He was exactly what Sherlock needed while also being exactly what she needed to balance out Sherlock. He also reminded her of how she used to be before she had to pretend for her husband.

When poor John told her of Sherlock's death it was like losing poor Jimmy all over again. She understood a bit more about what Anne and William went through, because Sherlock had become her boy. She'd soothed him when he was sick, fed him, given him tea, seen him in all kinds of moods, been rescued and protected by him. But the more she thought about it, and talked with John, she felt the same sort of wrongness about it.

When one of the new neighbors was arrested, and one of the others disappeared, her suspicions were aroused. Mrs. Hudson was a patient woman. She was a better actress and liar, out of necessity, than John and she knew better what to look for. She'd already had plenty of practice with her husband. When she managed to get two glimpses of a familiar figure through reflections and the corner of her eye she knew something was up and it confirmed what she knew about Sherlock—he would never give up.

Instead of a local school, 221c got the packed up science equipment. The clothes went to Mycroft instead of charity. John's continued well being went into Mrs. Hudson's capable hands.

As she set a cup of tea down near John's hand, the slight clatter of shifting china the only sound in the quiet room Mrs. Hudson smiled to herself. She briefly patted his shoulder, only to have her hand caught, squeezed and then released. Her smile grew and she turned to leave the apartment. At the door, she turned and looked back at the still figure slouched in the chair. It seemed to be John's turn to learn patience.


End file.
